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Alternative Strategies for the Employment RelationshipLabor Relations in the US Airline IndustryLabor Relations in the Airline Industry in Other CountriesHuman Resource Management at AirlinesConclusions
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... This is not surprising, given that the first authors associated with the reviewed literature have affiliations to these regions. On the other hand, attention to these parts of the world is also expected because they constitute the most important aviation markets (ACI, 2018;Biesslich and Liebhardt, 2013;Hoffer Gittell et al., 2009). ...
Sustainability reporting (SR) allows organisations to communicate their non-financial impacts to stakeholders. It has also become a widespread business practice in aviation, a transport sector that contributes significantly to global warming. Academia has begun to examine SR in the context of airlines surprisingly late, and no comprehensive reviews of its respective developments have been made so far. Consequently, a systematic literature review was performed with an exclusive focus on airline SR to synthesise its associated scholarly research and distinguish the common concerns and gaps that have emerged from it. The analysed publications indicate that the industry has lacked a unified policy and common understanding of how to define and measure sustainability, which has led to inconsistent SR practices. This causes ambiguity between the real actions and promotional communication through which airlines may legitimise their operations. Academia and various airline stakeholders would benefit from more in-depth studies examining the stakeholder views and quality of disclosures, helping the industry improve its SR.
... Furthermore, a two-tier wage system 3 is implemented with significantly reduced wage rates and slower wage progression for newly hired employees (Essenberg, 2002;Gittell et al., 2009). An overall increase in total working hours is mentioned by Blyton et al (2003) and by the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) as important safety risks due to anticipated fatigue levels (Eaton, 1996), now discussed as Airmanship 2.0 (Mohrmann and Stoop, 2019). ...
... Frequent conflicts between colleagues due to non-uniformity in employment contracts that are often unfavorable to a specific age, gender, and national group, may also pose additional safety risks (Fraher, 2014). Gittell et al. (2009) and Pettersen and Bjørnskau (2015) point out that poor communication between airline employees corrodes human relationships, results in blaming instead of problem-solving, thus undermining coordination. Finally, there is a large body of work on aviation maintenance safety with concerns formerly expressed by Reason (1997) about the risks in aviation safety deriving from maintenance errors and poor safety culture (Park and Jeon, 2020). ...
The aim of this study is to map the interrelations among Human Resource Management (HRM) austerity practices, work deterioration and safety and security risks in commercial aviation, during the 2008-–2016 economic crisis in Europe. We initially deployed an online survey among 120 aviation employees from 40 airports located in 22 European countries. An Economic Crisis Index (ECI) was created for each country, combining the mac- roeconomic figures during the economic crisis. The results of the survey establish a positive correlation between escalating ECI and the four study constructs and detected statistical differences in particular safety and security variables among the sample groups. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews with 23 aviation experts from the survey sample were conducted to explore in depth the reported changes in working conditions and aviation safety. The research model was then tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), confirming that austerity HRM practices indirectly increase safety and security risks through the mediation of the deteriorated working environment. The results of this study highlight the importance of human factors in the technically dominated area of aviation safety and suggest that safety and security should be addressed under a more systemic approach. These findings forewarn of the cost-minimizing policies currently dominating com- mercial air transport and their adverse safety and security implications, drawing the attention on new and emerging threats such as pandemics that were underestimated until recently.
... The tunnel under the English Channel generated over 7 million passengers a year 2004 th , on London-Paris and London-Brussels (Mišetić et al., 2007). It is important to highlight that in Europe, short-haul airlines face serious competition from surface transport (growing high-speed rail network), while US airlines do not generally face such competition (Gittell et al., 2016). In Europe a significant number of airlines were owned or subsidized by the state as a necessary instrument of economic development. ...
Increased competition within global airline industry initiates consolidation activities on entering into different modes of cooperative arrangements including, franchising, code share agreements, alliances, mergers and acquisitions. Selecting the optimal business model means implementation of sustainable competitive strategy as one of the key airline business challenges. Characteristics and trends in airline competition worldwide were analyzed by using correlation and regression metrics. European air transport competition analyzes include specific Southeast Europe topics. The liberalization of the Croatian air transport market has significantly affected the increase in demand in the international scheduled passenger traffic from the year 2004. Air transport in Croatia is growing much faster compare to the maritime and land transport sectors. A significant structural change in the aviation market due to the strong increase of low-cost carriers share in international scheduled traffic occurs. At the same time, the share of domestic scheduled and charter transportation is stagnating. Croatia Airlines in restructuring process provided in the period 2011-2015 recognized necessity to justify market position through optimal network strategy.
... In the aviation sector, 'legacy' airlines have to make strategic choices about how they respond to the intensification of market competition that has taken place over the past quarter century. Gittell and colleagues argue that maintaining a high level of 'relational coordination' to ensure that business operations and work practices are integrated effectively is the most effective way for airlines to remain viable in the context of increased international competition (Gittell et al., 2009). Airlines that have achieved this outcome, such as Southwest, have done so in part through positive work relationships built upon shared goals and mutual respect and coordinating business activities across different operational divisions to deliver airline services efficiently to the consumer market. ...
While previous studies indicate the commercial benefits for airlines from either ‘high road’ or ‘low road’ employment relations approaches, there is limited evidence of success among organisations utilising a ‘hybrid’ model involving differentiated arrangements with different workforce segments. In analysing the processes and outcomes associated with strategic change at Qantas Group, this article examines the reasons why organisations adopt hybrid employment relations arrangements and the outcomes associated with this approach. Drawing upon the strategic negotiations and employment subsystems frameworks, we find that hybrid strategies emerge under the influence of product market pressures and institutional forces. In the Qantas Group case, these factors combined to inhibit the capacity of management to pursue either low road or high road strategies, resulting in differentiated and fragmented arrangements. The case highlights the potential risks of hybrid employment relations strategies for worker commitment, workplace conflict and organisational performance, with implications for human resource management scholarship and practice.
... Our focus on the global airline industry is motivated by the fact that the key source for competitive advantage for firms competing in such industry has shifted from the possession of capital resources to human capital (Gardner 2002). In addition, recent globalisation facilitated by liberalisation and deregulation in the industry has exerted competitive pressures on firms to achieve improved performance, prompting the accelerated trend towards personnel poaching ( Gittell et al. 2009). Indeed, the industry 'embodies much of the complexity, volatility, uncertainty and challenge' that characterises today's global economy and labour market (Bell 2009, 20). ...
... ------------------------------ Insert Figure 2 about here ------------------------------ In Asia, the shift of economic powers from the West to the East has been exemplified in the industry. Since the 1970s, airline growth in the region has far exceeded North America and Europe ( Gittell et al. 2009). Deregulation in the region has facilitated the emergence of new players such as One-Two-Go (Thailand, 2003) ...
Although lateral hiring (LH) has increasingly come to characterize today's global labor market, past studies have largely overlooked how the practice unfolds as industry structure evolves. This article draws on the human capital theory to examine the evolution of LH and skills formations in the global airline industry from 1940 to 2010. This historical narrative identifies and distinguishes four distinct phases (i.e. golden, human-factor, embryonic and ‘war for talent’) that shed light on the changes in the industry facilitated by deregulation and liberalization. The phases also elucidate the processes and factors that precipitate the fundamental shift from government-funded to employer-funded and then to largely employee-funded training that has emerged to characterize the industry. The implications and contributions to management history are examined.
... A particularly large growth area, with links back to socio-technical literature of the 1950s, was HPWS (Procter 2008). Gradually, IR accommodated to HRM, and to some degree, incorporated it through a process of reworking the concept, introducing greater pluralism and colonizing it through teaching and journal editorships (Bacon 2003). A number of most visible names in British HRM after 2000 came from IR, such as Poole, Purcell, Sisson and Storey. ...
Sidney and Beatrice Webb are commonly cited as the founders of the British field of industrial relations. Are they, however, if the field is centred not on study of unions and collective bargaining but rather on the entire employment relationship? A ‘qualified yes’ answer is given; however, getting there involves major revision to the conventional historiography of the field. To illustrate, the article presents a traditional and revised family tree of British industrial relations. Numerous insights and implications follow.
... Aircraft maintenance is a crucial component of aviation safety and, in the context of increasing airline deregulation and restructuring, it becomes even more critical. Surprisingly, however, some recent significant contributions to the literature examining industrial relations (IR) and human resource management (HRM) in the aviation industry mention aircraft maintenance, if at all, only in passing (Bamber, Gittell, Kochan and Nordenflycht 2009a,b;Belobaba, Odoni and Barnhart 2009;Gittell, von Nordenflycht, Kochan, McKersie and Bamber 2009; special issue of International Human Resource Management 2010). Nor is aircraft maintenance work studied in the more critical academic literature on employment relations in the airline industry (e.g. ...
Several recent publications and a special issue of the International Journal of Human Resource Management have addressed airline employment relations since deregulation. In these, the crucial role of aircraft maintenance is largely unexamined. Human Resource Management (HRM) prescriptions for airline success, particularly a ‘commitment’ model entailing increased trust and employee initiative, may be in tension with the heavily regulated nature of the aircraft maintenance labour process. The airline HRM literature with its emphasis on discretion-based definitions of skill sits uneasily beside a safety literature that commonly stresses procedural compliance. Safe aircraft maintenance depends on appropriate work organisation, along with utilisation and development of maintenance workers' skills and recognition of their collective voice. Proposals to reshape or bypass any of these in the interest of cost containment call for cautious evaluation. Although addressing international debates, we examine these issues in the Australian context.
... As Luby (2005) once again points out, this makes problematic the conventional 'employee involvement' view of performance management, propagated more recently for example by Bamber et al (2009) and Gittell et al (2009). According to this prescription, if workers are given responsibility and autonomy over a work process, trusted and appropriately motivated, they will respond (other things being equal) with commitment, initiative and discretionary effort, and will 'do whatever is needed to ensure a successful operation' in the interests of the company :180) -including reorganising the work process. ...
Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (or LAMEs, [pronounced lay-mees] in Australian parlance) check and certify that the planes we fly in are safe to leave the ground. According to international regulation, a civil passenger plane cannot 'return to service' after maintenance unless a LAME 'signs off' that the work has been done to the requisite standard. This puts LAMEs in the middle of the tension between profits and safety – as the guardian of the latter. Management, professional engineers and system designers see the ideal LAME labour process as taylorised, driven by adherence to standard operating procedures specified in manuals and circumscribed by heavy regulation. But LAMEs' work is more varied than this, and their skills are both technical and interpersonal: they use both – including uncodified 'skills of experience' – to judge that the work of others is done to the necessary standard. Airline safety is therefore crucially dependent on LAME skills; on the training and accrediting institutions that ensure their integrity, and on the industrial relations systems that allow their exercise and prevent their compromise by cost pressures relayed by management. It is therefore surprising that the safety implications of the reorganisation and offshoring of maintenance work are so little studied in labour process circles, and in the emerging literature on deregulation, industrial relations and human resource management in the airlines. The lack of integration across salient literatures is also a surprising finding of this exploratory research. This paper canvasses a research agenda to explore the safety implications of the reorganisation of LAMEs' work, and their skills and qualifications.
... Studies of airline alliances management have been produced that focus, on the forms and extent of cooperation between partners (Mountford and Tacoun, 2004), the effects of alliances on competition (Wang et al., 2004), consumer and policy issues (Gudmundsson, 1999), and impacts on airline productivity and profitability (Oum et al., 2000). Few studies, however, focus on aspects of human resource management (HRM) (Eaton, 2001). Although certain HRM issues in the airline industry, such as human factors (Green et al., 1996), safety and risk (Dietrich and Jochum, 2004), and training and selection (Henley, 2004) have been discussed, these studies neither focus their analysis on alliances, nor provide an international comparison of HRM-practices, or an analysis of the extent of standardization versus differentiation. ...
... Safety can also be endangered by cut backs in areas of human resources such as insufficient staffing, lack of training and insufficient resource allocation, as well as by misunderstandings in communications and ineffective teamwork. Therefore, training is taken more seriously by airlines than by many other firms (Eaton, 2001), but without a standardized training program, a common safety level may not be present. ...
... Some airlines have begun to outsource even core activities, including engineering, ground handling, and check-in, as well as aircraft and crew. When capacity is not available, airlines can temporarily hire aircraft and crews (Eaton, 2001). In some cases, cabin crews have been replaced by flag of convenience crews that may have lower training standards and more flexible working arrangements (Boyd, 2001). ...
In this paper, the need and potential for standardization of human resource management (HRM) at the Star Alliance, the largest strategic alliance in the airline industry, is analyzed. The study shows that, in contrast to other functions such as procurement, IT systems, facilities and marketing, in the area of HRM pressures for differentiation are still dominant. Possible explanations for this are discussed.
... Although it has gained much attention recently . . . the topic of international commercial airline management suffers from a lack of theoretical and empirical work, and the scarcity of literature from a microeconomic perspective. " According to Eaton (2001), research is particularly difficult because " Airline managers are even more secretive and defensive about academic research than those in other industries " (Eaton, 2001). As empirical studies of HRM practices in the civil aviation industry were not evident, the review of literature became a study of popular themes and contemporary problems in the industry. ...
... Although it has gained much attention recently . . . the topic of international commercial airline management suffers from a lack of theoretical and empirical work, and the scarcity of literature from a microeconomic perspective. " According to Eaton (2001), research is particularly difficult because " Airline managers are even more secretive and defensive about academic research than those in other industries " (Eaton, 2001). As empirical studies of HRM practices in the civil aviation industry were not evident, the review of literature became a study of popular themes and contemporary problems in the industry. ...
... An organization's structure speaks volumes about the nature of its leadership and the state of communications. Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS) believe that organizational hierarchies create environments where those higher up legitimate their roles only " by issuing instructions, setting controls and carefully monitoring behavior " (Eaton, 2001). The opportunity costs of seeking control rather than commitment can be high. ...
The commercial aviation industry is an extremely competitive, safetysensitive high technology service industry. Socio-technical systems, employees and customers must be the arenas of an organization’s core competencies. The implications are vast and pervasive affecting no less than the organization’s structure, strategy, culture and numerous operational activities. In this article, select findings of a human resource management (HRM) audit are compared to the findings of a review of the literature on diversity, organization development (culture) and training and development. The audit, conducted by 13 executives from their respective organizations, contains extensive data on airlines from nine countries from around the globe. In this article we seek to extend the discussion of excellence in safety and customer service to applied systemic organizational HRM issues and critical success factors. Human resource management (HRM) expertise is required now, more than ever, to spearhead internal marketing strategies in order to gain employee commitment in order to foster excellence in safety and customer service.
